space suits heat shields for spaceshipshybrid rocket motors hypersonic vehicles capable of traveling five or more times the speed of sound

.

Trying to look at it under the aspect that the two companies that won the COTS competition last year did not fly a vehicle succesfully yet - no even suborbitally - and that two other companies that closed a Space Act Agreement also haven't flown a vehicle yet the result seems to be that this is the first example where NASA starts to work together with a company that bought a whole fleet of five vehicles from a company that in fact has successfully flown a vehicle.

Of course this company doesn't need no funding no more nor any Space Act Agreements etc. since it is completely funded and is getting working space vehicles not only but has several customers already.

It seems that NASA now appreciates that independent company.

The signed memorandum indirectly also assists Scaled Composites and t/Space because Virgin Galactic makes use of Scaled Composites' vehicles and because Scaled Composites is a part of t/Space. Perhaps it triggers assistance for t/Space from Virgin Galactic... which would provide a third alternative orbital vehicles for NASA...

Because old news moves lower and to different pages, it's better to link to the actual news item. You can find these url's with clicking on the news title. This way in a few weeks time people searching the forum will still be able to read the article.

no problem - I tend to link to the news site in general only to stimulate or assist general interest in it.

Regarding the topic itself I#Ve started here the news means that Virgin Galactic already may be considered as a future serious provider of services. May be NASA is aware about the chance that Virgin Galactic launches unmanned payloads into space - and towards the ISS - via the White Knight 2 and a QuickReach1 - Virgin Galactic explicitly has said much earlier that they think about unmanned orbital launches. And they have increased the size of the WK2 with that perspective.